Fashion Neurosis with Karl Ove Knausgaard

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1:10Hi, come in.

1:17Welcome to Fashion Neurosis, Karl Ove Knausgaard. Thank you. I'm not sure if Carl Ove is the right way to pronounce your name, but it sounds so good that it sounds a bit like a Roman emperor. I thought I would just continue to use it, if that's okay with you. Oh, that's good. I have had quite a lot of weird pronunciations of my name. People mostly call me Fraud or Fiend, and then Frud. my dad told me that he went to this posh doctor once and the the doctor said oh you only relation to the grapefruit and he said the grapefruit the grapefruit no i'm no relation at all and then that's what we all called sigmund freud the grapefruit and that was kind of how he was positioned like don't conform to any kind of notion of deity because my focus on my father was all about his work rather than anyone else's.

2:25Can you tell me what clothes you're wearing today and why you chose to wear them? Well I only really dress up when I'm doing events or interviews like this and then I wear black t-shirt and black jeans and black shoes that's my uniform but today was snowing in the morning so I had to have a sweater also black. Being interviewed for fashion neurosis would seem like an unlikely request to agree to I wondered if you could tell me why you said yes exactly because it was unlikely um you know everyone has a relation to clothes um and it is very meaningful even if you don't reflect upon it and i thought it would be interesting to kind of talk about life and art through that lens in a way.

3:34Yeah, I agree. I asked Martin Amis if he would do it, obviously a while ago, because I remember reading in Money, he described cool trousers, and you knew exactly what he meant. And when I read his work and read yours I can feel that there's a relationship and I know there's things I can find out that I'm really interested to find out but anyway he said no did he say why no because I asked his wife and it wasn't out of the question until she chose the right moment when he said no way you know I don't know anything about fashion but he actually did you know whether he knew it or not he he just did know about he knew how to use words that made you fan have an idea of how someone looked in these cool trousers and how attractive it was you're quite a shy person what was the first thing you wore that you knew would invite disapproval I started to be kind of rebellious when I was in my early teens I really wanted to be someone else, somewhere else I think and it wasn't so much an item of clothes that I got, I shaved my head and I had a cross in my ear and another cross in that ear.

5:23And I remember my father, when he saw it, he said, well, you look like an idiot. And that was kind of what I wanted to achieve, I think. Did it make you feel freer or more self-conscious? I think it made me free really I met the actor Dennis Hopper once and we were standing outside an event and I said I love your work and he said what about me and it was funny and it was really great because obviously that's what I meant and I wondered how do you deal with that the fandom and all the people obsessed with you I try not to think about that at all I mean when I meet people they read my books I write very personally in my books but I never think about that when I meet people that they know anything about me so I feel that the whole thing doing events, talking with readers are very distant to me as a person really it's more like yeah, like I'm representing my books or something like that.

6:38It's not personal, but it could be personal because people then, you know, they can tell me things that is really hard to deal with for me. They do it because they feel they know me and almost like we're friends. and I can't give that much back is the feeling I often get. For instance, one who, her brother died like three days before the event, that she wanted to talk about that, and what can you do? She was crying, and so we went to a cafe to talk about it, and it was more like I was a priest or a psychiatrist or something. And those kind of situations doesn't normally occur when you're writing, but just because I'm so personal, it kind of evokes that kind of situation, really.

7:42And I want to be good and kind and help, but then I don't know them. It feels like I owe them something, but I don't. So it could be difficult. But yeah, it's a dream situation, really, because that's what you want, you know, a connection with the readers. Yeah. Something I find, I mean, reading your books, you write and it feels like you're somehow writing for us. or when I'm reading I feel like you're writing and I'm writing too. I mean, it sort of doesn't make any sense because I could obviously never do that, but it's so connected. And even though you write in such a personal way, it feels like my story.

8:36So I can imagine people wanting to feel that connection that you make possible through your writing. And it's so intimate, but it doesn't feel at all oversharing for want of a better... Well, it is oversharing, for sure. But when I wrote it, I thought, this isn't interesting for anyone. And I also thought, this is really only me, you know? This is only I have experienced this. I mean, in exact situations, had relations. But then it turned out, no, it's the exact opposite. People related very closely to even the most private and, you know, things that I thought was unique to me. So I guess the lesson from that is that we are more alike than we think.

9:36And I think there's no use of having secrets because it's all the same. Yeah, when you described seeing your father when he was dead and being able to look at him rather than trying to read his face and see what mood he was in, I found that resonated for completely different reasons because I was so obsessed with my father and I was always trying to read him, even though I felt loved by him and I was loved by him. but I'd witnessed his sort of abandoning of other people, especially my mother. And I was always worried I was going to lose that. So I find now when people tell me, oh, do you remember when we went to the Woolsey and sang Irish songs together?

10:27And I can't remember because I was so fixated on the moment of figuring out how to be the perfect kind of co-conspirator. Yeah. You wanted to please him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know that feeling very well. But I knew that if I tried to please him, I would also, that wouldn't work either. So I had to find a kind of space where I was pleasing and autonomous, where I felt so dependent. and it was like... Did that change through your relationship with him when he got older? No, not really. It only changed when he died and even though I dreaded him dying, when he actually died, and I'd wondered about this before he died, it was though his greatest gift to me was to set me free from his opinion and did you find...

11:39Do you think he was aware of this or...? I don't know. He definitely... He knew I was his staunchest ally and I don't know because he never talked like that. You know, he never... We didn't talk about feelings. I remember doing some self-help course once and then saying, I love you. And he looked at me in a kind of quizzical way. And I thought, okay, well, I've done that.

12:21It was silly, but it was just something to, in a way, it was, will he still love me if I say I love him? Did he see you, do you think? Yeah, he definitely did probably more than I sort of realised but I wondered why your father showed you love in such an aggressive and hostile way because he clearly was interested and sort of followed you and wanted to have a relationship but you describe, you know, he was so horrible. Yeah.

13:15He was very young when he got children, and he was very chaotic. And I think he really didn't want to be the person he was. There was a lot of longing in his life, I think. I didn't know about that at the time, but I think that was kind of the key. He often talked about, you know, he wanted to be a gardener, he wanted to be a truck driver, he wanted to be, you know, he wanted to be something else. And when he was, you know, like a kind of old-fashioned father, very authoritarian, and I know for sure he was beaten when he grew up. and he was kind of traumatized really. But when he divorced, he, and I think I write about this, he changed character kind of almost completely.

14:15He was, when I was, you know, like 10, he was a teacher and he was a local politician and he was, you know, he dressed like a proper adult. He had tweed suit jackets with patches on the elbow. He also had a pipe at a point and a beard. But he looked good. He was a man, he was a good-looking man. And then he divorced and started his new life. He started to drink a lot, started to invite people. He never invited a person in his life. He started to change the way he dressed. start to dress like kind of almost hippie hippie-ish you know with what do you say tunics or whatever um and that was really scary for me because i i remember i wanted him to be you know that strict authoritarian teacher that he was because i was at least he was safe and knew where i had him but then he changed and and and you know start to talk about things i'd ever heard about and he could cry or he was and I was that age I was 16 17 that was the least thing I needed was him floating away you know and become something else yeah I remember that bit where he you said he wore soft clothes yeah and that these liberal people wore these soft clothes yeah and that you despised it and yeah I I think that's a good response I in my school I went to a Steiner school and they wore these drab droopy things and Birkenstocked and it was as though they they were kind of counterbalancing their ego with these horrible drab clothes and it was pat you I think it created a panic in me that if I didn't watch out, I would slide into this kind of muddy thing that they all did.

16:27Yeah. They didn't have proper rules. They had no rules, but they had weird rules, like you couldn't wear black or they disapproved of corners for some reason. Yeah, exactly. and it's so interesting that thing of absolutism because I remember reading that Seal the singer had a stepfather and he said it was easy because he was so horrible there was no sometimes nice which is more confusing yeah that's true yeah and in your teenage years you took a lot of trouble not to be noticed, but how did you draw attention to yourself and what kind of clothes did you start to wear? So my relationship to clothes is really kind of a long and rather complicated story because when I was little, like seven, eight, nine, I really loved clothes.

17:32clothes. I remember longing for specific items of clothes that I wanted or that I wanted to wear. And that was not the correct way to be where I grew up. It was, you know, I,

17:55just the fact to be interested in it was wrong. And I remember also, the only one I could talk about clothes with was girls and I thought that was a good way to to get to know them you know because I was also very into girls um but it wasn't it was also completely wrong nobody was a boy who talks about clothes you know what clothes what items did you know when I was really literally it was I just wanted to be you know beautiful or pretty or something like that so a white shirt, you know, or whatever kind of. Something nice. Yeah, and also I remember a desire for some sneakers. I remember they were orange and green.

18:42This was in the 70s, you know. I still remember them. I still remember my desire to have them on me, but I never got them. But the thing was that it was kind of wrong, but I do remember how important it was to me. And then there was, you know, I was 12 or 13, I think, and we should choose a college against a school, you know, so you could have red and blue, and I picked red. I was the only boy who did it. I was completely wrong. After that, they started to call me Femi, which is like feminine, and I was, you know, hitting puberty, and that was the worst thing that could happen really. Everybody called me that.

19:27So then I decided to change and luckily we moved then to another place. Nobody knew about this but I started to have a different approach to the world really. I understood I can't continue this so I started to dress differently and behave differently really. but at the same time I really loved music and this was, you know, it was Norway and it was outside of everything so that created some sort of longing also in me and it was British music and this was in the 70s and 80s so it was punk and then post-punk and I read, you know, New Musical Express and Sounds and all of that and looked at those people they were so incredibly cool It was like, you know.

20:24And so when I was a teenager a bit older, I tried to go in that direction, which, you know, I never looked cool, but tried to, but I couldn't understand what made them so cool, but I think it's the attitude, not what they're wearing, really. So that was long, long coats and, yeah, that kind of stuff. Where do you think the shame came from around wanting to look nice? You know, I was kind of adjusted. It wasn't right. You shouldn't do that as a boy or as a man, you know. There was a lot of things you should do. And I did those things. You know, I cried a lot too. And I liked flowers. And the social code where I grew up was like in the Viking era, you know.

21:17So the masculinity demands were high and you had to adjust. And I think that's fine. I mean, it's good. You have to have some boundaries. And I think it's very different to grow up now than it was then, really. Yeah. Those things have changed a bit. Yeah, they have. Which is very good, of course. Yeah, it is good. I think the whole kind of freedom about what you can wear is so uplifting and having shame about wanting to look nice is, oh, it took me so long to shake that, maybe about 45 years or something. But I think it's partly one of the reasons I became a designer so I could control my kind of look.

22:08and it's very handy. I mean, it's great. The older I get, the more important I see clothes being just because they're a way to make you feel unselfconscious and kind of liberated, really. Do you remember what it was that someone else wore that you first found attractive? Well, you know, I can't really remember. but I remember seeing you know cool people wanting to be like them of course but I can't remember any specific item like on a girl did you have like girls that wore certain I mean certain items did you notice those not so much really so I trying to be this post-punk figure. I lived in a town that was, the cool thing was to be Christian, really.

23:16So in my gymnasium, everyone was Christian, also the girls. I mean, they were never very proper and nice-looking in that way, almost like American prep style. So there was an enormous gap between me and them. that didn't mean I didn't desire them but it was, they couldn't relate to the way they dressed really but I do remember you know if you buy stuff and you think it looks good but it doesn't look good on you you don't you can't make them I can't look good in anything really and then I was in that town, Kyrgyzstan where I grew up walking a morning Saturday morning and there was a guy walking 10 meters ahead of me and he looked incredibly cool.

24:09I mean, really, really cool. And I walked past him and had a look and I was actually, what is his name, the bass player in Blur, Alex James. Oh, yes. And I realized he was wearing something very simple. He was just cool, you know. And it was him? It was him. they were playing I was there because it was a music festival and they were playing and this was early in the morning hardly anyone in the street but he was walking there and then I realized it's the attitude it's the way that's the key to being cool so that's why I never achieved that even though if I everyone else thinks you're cool I don't think so they do you used to have a very cool haircut but it was quite specific, and I wondered where that came from.

25:06Had you seen someone that you wanted to emulate? No. But I had the same haircut throughout the 90s, really. It was short and just very simple. And then I left the town I lived in, went out on an island far out in the sea. It was four or five people living there and me to write. But I couldn't write. So then I remember exactly after a shower, I thought, well, maybe because my hair started to be a bit longer, Maybe I'll just try to see what happens if I don't cut my hair. And I had this idea of the 70s. I really loved the 70s, kind of more than I should, really. The aesthetics and, yeah, I think it's in the music and everything.

26:08But it was, in the end, really associated with my book, my struggle. I let the hair grow then. And then when the book was finished, I cut my hair. And yeah, I also grew a beard, so I looked kind of, yeah, I think about 70-ish. And I cut everything when the book was done. I thought I should get back to normal. So it was, yeah, it was just a way of looking very different from how I, the one I feel inside. And it was like freedom in a way, you know. It felt like freedom, really. I guess that's the old hippie feeling. They must have felt that in the 60s. Let the hair grow, that's freedom. But I once went to a talk show at this time, and I was sitting next to Robin Williams, the singer, and he called me throughout Gandalf.

27:09So that wasn't... Yeah, it was funny, but I guess I looked like Gandalf. I don't think so. That's really a bad description. It was a really cool haircut, actually. Because I remember you describing how you and your brother had this kind of short, spiky hair on top, and it was as though you had long hair and short hair. It was great. I mean, it's so rare to see a writer with something, you know with like showing showing out you know just letting letting people see they they're interested and I I think it's very exciting it's you know it's exciting reading books and when you see a bit of the writer and you have another way of connecting I find I find that really thrilling and I'm sure I'm not the only one yeah I think it was it is actually connected with the writing because the writing was very much then about being you know being unprotected and when you're writing the thing that restricts you is other people's opinions I mean and you got that in your head you know so I can't write this or what will she think or what will he think or this is bad, all those kind of things.

28:45That's a social thing you have in your head when you're writing. And when I did my struggle, it was just because I couldn't write. I didn't make sense of anything. I thought I should just do exactly what I want and don't think about if it looked good, if it was good, anything. Just try to be free in the writing. and I think it was the same with the haircut and with all of that. I was in a point where it was very important not to think what other people, not to care about what other people will think. I never thought about this but it seems obvious now when you're asking. Interesting because you talk about caring a lot about what people thought and then you went completely against that.

29:39and when you were writing did you think I'll just put it down and then maybe I'll take stuff out and then you never went back yeah and it was a process I remember the first little piece I wrote I sent to my editor and he kind of jumped back and said this is I call it manic self-confession because the first thing I wrote was something I've never said to anyone you know in my life not a single personally it was completely secret and the power in that the power in just writing that down and sending it to someone was you know it's immense and then it was difficult to continue but it became easier and easier and I think I I fooled myself and I thought that nobody would actually read this at all so I managed to create a space where where I could be free but of course there's always restrictions anyway.

30:33I mean, I couldn't write exactly what I was thinking about other people. That's impossible. But I'm back in hiding now. So it was those years I did it. It's interesting you say about that he's the sort of self-confession, because I don't find it confessional. I just find it like so urgent and important as I'm reading. But confessional there's a sort of victim about it which I never get from reading my struggle but that's because it's more like it's turned into novels or stories and in those stories there are much much more space than this little person thinking about himself and that space is is also yes very much part of the novel.

31:32I think you've been asked to be in campaigns as a model, is that right? But you haven't agreed to do them. Yeah, that's right. Would you ever walk in a show? No. No? No. Not like Mew Mew or Comme des Garcons or something? No. But I do get you know, I cut my hair in a little men's barbershop in Blackheath. It costs like 30 pounds or maybe even 25 pounds. And I always go there. And the one who cuts my hair there, she asked me, and I was very flattering, and she asked me, she said, you know, we are modeling for old people. Would you be interested in that, to the haircut? And I said, no.

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33:58I remember when I worked for Vivian Westwood when I was in my probably like 23 or something and she asked me to be in one of her, walk in one of her shows and I said no because I thought my arms were fat or I was so self-critical. And anyway, she sort of, she didn't really try and persuade me because she wasn't a very maternal type of person in that way. And she obviously just thought I was completely stupid not to do it. And she didn't get self-loathing. And I have very few regrets, but I wish I'd done it. But it's that thing of just being too afraid to act as though I thought something of myself.

34:51In my struggle, when you describe going to your father's house and seeing all the empty bottles and the rotting clothes and the smell and particularly your grandmother who had lived there with him and the state that she was in as well and all her dress kind of stinking of urine. And was there anything earlier that gave you an idea that she could, she was capable of enabling a situation of such sort of degradation and degenerate life? And I wondered if you thought her relationship with him was responsible, you know, was to do with, had created his alcoholism.

35:52That's a very good question. And it's very interesting.

36:02I felt that she was, probably had done some social climbing. She came from a different social class, really, from that one she married into, which was kind of a bourgeois small town class. So I think she had a life that wasn't entirely hers. And so there was an element of performance in it.